#217: Do I Need a Big Audience Before I Launch?

Welcome back to another episode of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia, here to get you going with your course, your live workshop, your group coaching, whatever way it is, you are going big. You were putting yourself out there in a new way and I am here for it. And today we’re going to continue our series about the biggest course creation questions that we get on the regular.

And today, we’re going to talk about the big question, Do I need an audience, a big audience, a big list before I launch a course? Because, guys, I get this question all the time. I talk to potential students or potential clients. They’re saying, Hey, I just don’t feel my list. My audience is big enough to sell because that’s what it’s really about at the end of the day.

Do I have an audience that will convert? And guys, it is not about size. Let me just tell you. It is about quality, not quantity. And that’s what we’re going to break down in this episode, because my answer to do I need a big audience before I launch is no. But there are caveats and we’re going to talk about that today.

We’re going to dig in and talk about what it really means to have an engaged audience and what I think you need as your course consultant before you put out a course, before you put out a workshop. Now, before we dive in, this episode, of course, is brought to you by our Done for You services. We hand-hold you through the entire process of building out your certification course, your signature course starter lead gen onboarding, whatever it is you want to build.

We hold your hand through the entire process, also give you that marketing toolkit to get you started. Go to course Creation Bootcamp slash course and check it out. Now, I might be sounding a little different today, a little hoarse. I got sick Trust in my 11 year old is graduating from elementary school and as a parting gift, he got a little bit of sickness from his class, gave it to my husband, Alex, who then gave it to me.

So I was pretty much down for the count for a few days, and it just hit me that we need those days to recover. Right? Like when we are not feeling great, especially as entrepreneurs and as course creators, we need to give ourselves the grace to step away and to feel better. And trust me, I really needed that time to step away.

Thankfully, I have a team that can help take care of different things, take care of the clients, take care of the students. But but the stress does not help. So it was a big AHA for me to manage the stress because I think I could have gotten over this sickness fast or if I didn’t have that layer of stress on top.

So good for me to remember that I need time to recover, especially when it’s hectic. Graduate ish time. We’ve got tennis going on, all kinds of activities, so make sure you’re giving yourself a little bit of grace if you need that recovery time. All right. Let’s dive in to one of our big, big, big course creation questions. Do I need an audience of thousands, Gina, before I launch?

Because you do hear these gurus. Guys, you gotta build up your list. You gotta build it up to the thousands. Here, I’m going to show you how. Now the answer is, you don’t need to build it up to thousands, but I want you to have an engage list like I talked about at the beginning of this episode. And that Engage list can appear or can manifest itself in a number of different ways.

 

Here’s one of them. I was on a training call with a big literary agent and I mean because she works with a lot of celebrities and she was saying that more and more authors get booked out because they have big followings. Make sense, right? They want to have a built in audience. However, she’s also booked out authors that have really passionate client lists.

And if you’re listening right now, you might be thinking, Well, Gina, I don’t have that prototypical opt in list. I don’t have thousands upon thousands inside my email list. However, I’m a medical practitioner. I’m a financial advisor with a really passionate client list. And this literary agent was saying, you know, we’ll publish books with these folks because we know they’ll do well.

They have a history of buying from them. And we love to see engage audiences like that. So that’s one way that you could definitely launch. Do you have an Engage client list? So there’s another example. You have a very strong niche and you might not need thousands of people. You might just need hundreds of people. I’ll give you two examples.

One, I was talking to this woman who taught editing and writing classes, and she had this passionate club, paid club that she was teaching once a month and there were maybe a couple of hundred really passionate people who want to learn from her. Now, she didn’t have thousands. She had hundreds that were hanging on her every word to put out a workshop.

That is a great audience to launch to. She didn’t need thousands because truly the people on her workshop list or going to her every week in her club were truly engaged and would buy the next step with her. That is worth its weight in gold. Let me give you another example of small but mighty Megan Helmsley, who I’ve had on the podcast.

I’ll link to her. Awesome episode in the show notes Holistic herbs, donkey, farrier and she had hundreds of people on her Facebook group just clamoring for her to put out a donkey trimming course. Hundreds, if not thousands. I don’t even know if there’s thousands of donkey farriers in the United States because again, it doesn’t matter. Because for them, Meghan was the queen of donkeys.

It was her word or nothing. And they trusted her more than anyone else. She got results more than anyone else, and they wanted to hear from her. They wanted her to put out a course. So when she did, it went bananas, right? Because they couldn’t wait. They said we will buy this from you, Meghan. And she knew it, too, because she knew how engaged they were.

She knew how excited they were. And that’s why it’s worth its weight in gold. Like she didn’t need thousands. Right? She just needed hundreds of people that would truly buy from you. That’s what’s important. The quality, not the quantity. I’ll link to that episode, though, because you’ll hear that Meghan, as a result, doesn’t really need to work as a donkey farrier anymore because she’s launched her courses, because she’s grown her empire and it’s just amazing to see what she’s done.

Okay, so I think I’ve established you do not need thousands of followers. You don’t need this huge list. Now, what else you need other than this engaged audience? Well, I’d love for you to test the waters with your engage audience, whether it’s 50 or 100 or a couple of hundred. Right. Get their buying in advance. So what might that look like?

You’re going to announce a workshop, for example. You’re going to announce a small ticket or a smaller ticket under 300 bucks, and you’re going to say, hey, this is a taste of what I might put out in a bigger way. I would love for you to check it out. You are my favorite people. You are my engaged people.

You are my community. So I would love for you to join it. And then you can see how it does. Or another option for this if really, Gina, I just want to put out a bigger ticket. But is there a way to test out a part of the bigger ticket? You can say that this is a preview of something bigger and ask them to put down a deposit.

For example, this engaged audience and say, hey, I’m going to go bigger and I’m going to teach you all of this. And all to me, the price point is going to be 1997, and I’m asking you to put down a deposit of 197 to do a preview of it, and you’re going to get something and tell them what they’re going to take away.

You’re going to get a benefit. And I’m only asking you because you are truly my best people. By the way, if some of you are listening right now. Really, Gina, I don’t have hundreds. Okay. Do you have 20? Do you have 20 engage people? I’ve talked about this before, but I had a mastermind member back when I had a mastermind who taught people how to run a photo booth business.

And she was really, really good at it. She didn’t have a huge list. She just realized that this was a great niche and she happened to be fantastic at it. So she offered group coaching and she got 15 people because she had great word of mouth. People wanted to know from her. It’s a small industry and people talk in a great way.

So she got 15 people for a group coaching and one cohort. The next cohort, I think she got another 15. So if hundreds feels too high, get ten or 12. Make a list of 20 people to start and then know that you’re going to get ten or 12 ultimately. So you’re going to get your 20 and then you’re going to offer that live workshop or a live cohort.

I have episodes on Life Workshop and I have an episode on Life cohort. So all link to those in the show notes and you can go to the next step in those. And by the way, just because I’m saying you don’t need a big audience doesn’t mean you don’t need a list. I just wanted to drop this in here.

Before we go, I want you building your list. I want you to have a great lead magnet. I want to make sure you have a nurture strategy. I want to make sure that when you’re launching your course, you are growing your list. Don’t neglect that. This is not permission to neglect list building. Okay? Even though you don’t have thousands of followers, I’m giving you permission to move forward with your course.

But we’re going to have a mind on list building and a and a focus on this building as well. All right. Hopefully this inspired you to launch your course knowing that you do not need a huge audience. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss one episode. And until next week, go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.